Installing Win98SE over HP Recovery Partition

[Patrick Maloney_1]

Hi,

I have an HP Pavillion 734N desktop and I'd like to install Win98 parallel to WinXP. The HP Recovery Partition is shown as Windows drive D on my system, though I know it's installed first on the drive. I nkow this because I also run Linux, and the recovery partition is HDA1.

I'm not concerned about my MBR or any bootloader, as I will be installing a fresh copy of the linux GRUB bootloader.

AS the recovery partition is just over 5 gigs of fat32, and first on the drive, will I be able to install Win98 on it without screwing up XP? Again, boot loaders are of no concern as I use a third party soloution.

I also have made CD's for all the Recovery info through the HP utility, so I I totally nuke my system I'll be able to reinstall and start from scratch.

Has anyone tried this? I've read the info on Microsoft's site, but it all harps on about boot loaders and what is listed as drive C.

Since XP is on NTFS, Win98's installer probably won't notice it, will it? So the C drive issue is not applicable. Please correct me if I'm wrong....

Any tips apreciated.

Thanks

[Roger Faucher]

Patrick:

Here a good reference article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306559&Product=winxp

It doesn't refer to Linux but it may be helpful.

Roger

[Patrick Maloney_1]

Thanks for the link. However, it doesn't address what I need it to.

I would like to install Win98 on my HP Recovery Partition.

When I put in my windows 98 cdrom and start the setup, it tells me that there is an operating system installed already, and then tells me that it will delete some files.

The recovery partiton is the first 5 gigs on my hard drive and formatted as fat32, then windows xp takes the next 20 gigs, then I have another fat32 partiton taking 30 gigs, and the rest is dedicated to linux.

How can I make it install on the recovery partition and not screw up my XP partition?

Is it safe to simply proceed with the install of win 98, or is it going to kill windows xp?

Am I being clear? I guess I'm hoping an HP person will chime in that knows alot about the recovery partition and how the disk is set up from the factory.

Has anyone else done this?

[Roger Faucher]

Patrick:

If you're not prepared to wipe everything from your hard drive, you're correct, the link I sent you to won't work.

Sorry!

Roger

[Patrick Maloney_1]

too bad....

hey, someone gave me the idea that I could boot from a win98 boot disk, then tell the win98 setup program to install it where I want.

In this case, I would be telling it to install to "d" drive, which XP says is the recovery partition.

might that actually work?

[Patrick Maloney_1]

I grabbed a copy of System Commander, so now I've got it all done.

Thanks.